Love Is a Thin Red Line
"When you give up on love, everythign else seems to go with it --
joy,
hope,
forgiveness,
compassion --
they're all interconnected."
Wow. That's giving up on a lot of cool stuff.
Another zinger is quoted here:
"When love does not come to you, it breaks your heart, but when you do not give love away, it hardens your heart."
Ouch! It sounds like we are destined for pain. McManus reaffirms his paranoia of a "conspiracy theory" (that we are designed for love). He saw Thin Red Line in a movie theater in Westwood (part of Los Angeles near UCLA), where he vividly remembers two things:
1. Jim Caviezel stood in the lobby watching reactions of the people as they left.
2. A "haunting" monologue in the middle of this war movie:
"My dear wife,
you get something twisted out of your insides by all this blood, filth, and noise.
I wanna stay changless for you.
I wanna come back to you the man I was before.
How do we get to those other shores?
To those blue hills.
Love.
Where does it come from?
Who lit this flame in us?
No war can put it out, conquer it.
I was a prisoner.
You set me free."
Wow. That is a unique line -- especially in the middle of a war movie! That is a deep and yet need-to-ask question. Where does love come from? It's almost like an alien virus that we've been infected with. We're powerless to negate its influence over us. We can alter it (harden or soften our hearts), but we can't completely avoid it.
McManus repeats his point again and again -- We all crave love. We were made for it. He leaves us with this last thought:
"The most powerful evidence that our souls crave God is that within us there is a longing for love. We are all connected by a thin red line."
Man, how I wish everyone would believe in God! I wish everyone could see that He exists and how I wish that all could embrace Him and receive His love and forgiveness. I wonder what the world would be like if we all believed in Jesus? We'd certainly still all be different, but I wonder how that would or could limit the effects of sin on our planet? The earth would certainly extract its cursed toil on laborers. Disease and death would still strike -- seemingly at random. There would still be denominations and disagreements over the degrees of sovereignty, grace, tradition, ritual and other details.
I remember seeing Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort debate a couple atheists on tv. One of the common arguments about/against/for God's existence is that you can't see Him. "But you can't see love, either. Does that mean love doesn't exist?" I wish the two believers had done a better job at debating. That is the risk and nature of live television, though. You have to bring it when it's happening. You can't come back later and say, "If only I had said this or that!" It's not as easy as it looks, but there are good argument points to bring up in a debate with an atheist. Love is certainly a powerful one.
Posted by Doug Van Pelt at August 2, 2007 10:58 AM